CK Fulfilment & Mintsoft: How CK Fulfilment Handles Two Peak Seasons
We spoke to Rebecca Kane, Tony Barnes, and Keira Russell about how peak season affects CK Fulfilment.
Who are CK Fulfilment?
After struggling with their fulfilment centre as an ecommerce brand, they brought their operation back in-house, set up their own systems and integrated Mintsoft, creating their own 3PL – CK Fulfilment.
What Does Peak Season Look Like for CK Fulfilment?
CK Fulfilment has two peak seasons - Business to Business (B2B) and Direct to Customer (D2C).
B2B begins in September. The team begins sending stock to retailers and high street stores, ending around October, then moves straight into D2C peak season, ending around Christmas. In January, “return peak season” begins.
“It's chaos from September. Organised chaos. We do 60% to 70% of the order volume around that time because our retailers have that Q4 peak. It’s hugely significant and we really, really need to get it right. If we don't get it right, it's very, very hard to pull that back in the quieter months of the year.”
– Rebecca Kane, Managing Director.
Customer expectations
Customer expectations increase during peak season. Both B2B and D2C customers expect same-day dispatches to ensure all orders arrive before Christmas.
Previous Peak Seasons
“Before we started using Mintsoft, it was all a little bit clunky. The data wasn't there, so it was really difficult to get your resource planning correct. Now we've got Mintsoft; it's easy access, and we build meetings around that data.”
– Tony Barnes, Operations Director.
Around 10 to 20% of CK Fulfilment’s daily outputs are premier orders; this includes 24-hour or premium shipping.
“Without Mintsoft, next-day and premium shipments were always an issue. We couldn't really see them. Now we've got Mintsoft, that's highlighted to us all the time so that we can get the premium orders through the door in line with SLAs.”
– Tony Barnes, Operations Director.
Peak Season Planning
Peak season planning begins with demand forecasting, which is done by both CK Fulfilment and their clients, looking at previous years' order volume and the growth of their clients. This is followed by resource forecasting to ensure they have enough stock on hand.
If temporary staff are required, they are brought in and trained on the systems. With the Mintsoft mobile app, training temporary staff only takes one to two days.
For CK Fulfilment, a go-live checklist is crucial before peak season hits to ensure everything runs smoothly:
- Carrier integrations must run perfectly
- ASNs need to be in the system and delivered on time
- Order rules need to be stress-tested
- Billing rates are set up per client
Town halls are held pre-peak to ensure the team know their roles and what they’re doing, alongside Teams messages so everyone is up to date on peak season plans.
How Mintsoft Has Helped Peak Season
Stock take
Mintsoft’s stock take features have had huge benefits for both CK Fulfilment and their customers.
“The clients love that [stock take] because they want their stock to be correct. I would say around peak period the batch templates are huge for us. The ability to be able to go and pick certain carriers out at any one time, the ability to go and pick out your best sellers at any one time and pinpoint stock within the warehouse that will clear your order pot quicker.”
– Tony Barnes, Operations Director
Full visibility & real-time reporting
Having full traceability and visibility of orders has been essential. Previously, the team relied on manual records and weren’t able to provide all information back to the client. However, since adopting Mintsoft, CK Fulfilment are able to keep a close eye on all key metrics.
“During peak, as volumes spike, we are able to have everything in one place, from returns to orders to stock control. It all keeps it in one system for the team to be able to have big visibility on.”
– Keira Russell, B2B Operations Manager.
Real-time reporting has allowed the team to dive deep into data and identify any areas for growth within the business. Decisions can be made quickly and put into practice.
Returns management
Mintsoft’s returns management has simplified CK Fulfilment’s returns process. The team have a 72-hour SLA deadline from goods coming back into the system. However, with Mintsoft, the team can process returns within minutes rather than hours.
How CK Fulfilment Handles Two Peak Seasons
“It's a simple system using the returns process on Mintsoft, which allows ease of training when volumes increase. We're able to train all the members of the team and get more people involved as volumes increase. We have really good visibility of when the return goes back into the system and then where the stock flow shows it going back in for the pickers to be able to go and get the next wave of orders.”
CK Fulfilment & Mintsoft
“Particularly last peak season, where we saw the order volume spike, and we were able to really start exploring the bulk batches and using the different picking methods, which have been really useful to CK in handling that growth in the company.
I would recommend Mintsoft, and I do recommend Mintsoft frequently to retailers who've got their own warehouse and that kind of thing.”
CK Fulfilment & Mintsoft
“I would recommend Mintsoft to any company that needs to use a WMS system. Our clients, we always use Mintsoft. We wouldn't recommend them to use any other WMS system.”
CK Fulfilment & Mintsoft
“Since we started using Mintsoft as well, we've discovered more and more that we didn't know that was there. We do now know, and our tech people tap into that”